Down On The Farm With A’s Special Assistant Grady Fuson

by Bill Moriarity / A’s Farm Editor
June 10, 2021
 
After originally joining the A’s organization as an area scout under the Billy Martin regime back in 1982, Grady Fuson rose through the ranks and eventually ended up serving as the A’s scouting director from 1995 until 2001. It proved to be a very fruitful period for the organization, when the team drafted such talented players as Eric Chavez, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito and Rich Harden.

He left the A’s at the end of 2001 to become the assistant general manager of the Texas Rangers and, after moving on to head up the San Diego Padres scouting department, Fuson eventually returned to the A’s over 11 years ago to serve as a special assistant to the general manager. And he’s since been honored by his baseball peers with prestigious awards for his service as a scout as well as for his contributions in player development.

Of course, many know Fuson as the scout in the cinematic version of Moneyball who has a dramatic confrontation with Billy Beane and ends up getting fired – though that’s not quite how it happened (which we chronicled here).

We were fortunate enough to catch up with Fuson earlier week just shortly after he’d spent over a week working with some of the A’s youngest prospects in Stockton. And, as always, we were happy to have the opportunity to pick the brain of one of baseball’s top talent evaluators and get the inside scoop on some of the A’s top prospects. You can find our complete conversation available on A’s Cast.

 
AF:  I wanted to start out by asking you about a few guys, a few pitchers who’ve been in the system for a while. And I want to start out with James Kaprielian, because he’s such an interesting story. He didn’t pitch for two and a half years, you had to wonder if he was ever going to pitch again, and here he finally makes it to the major leagues, he’s pitching for the A’s and looking really, really confident and in command. Can you talk a little bit about just how it feels to see James Kaprielian making it to the major leagues after everything he’s been through?

GF:  Yeah, it has been a great story and you go back to that Sonny Gray trade and how much he meant to that trade. And most of the guys we acquired in that thing have either underperformed or moved on elsewhere. But Kap worked so hard. He was determined. Even though there were some dark days there with the issues that he had, he was so determined, he was diligent. And I think it’s a pleasure for everybody to see this guy get up there. Last year he got a taste of it and it was okay. And this year he’s actually gone up there and thrown very, very well. So I think everybody’s pleased for him.

AF:  We know his dad is definitely pleased for him. We’re all well aware of that!

GF:  Yeah, he kind of steals the show when you see him on TV, doesn’t he?

AF:  Exactly, he’s becomes the star of the show! Another guy who’s back with the A’s again now is Jesús Luzardo. I think a lot of people had a lot of hopes for him going into the season that maybe this would be the big year breakout year where he really established himself. And, of course, he had the injury and he’s been somewhat inconsistent. Can you talk a little bit about where Jesús Luzardo’s at and maybe why he hasn’t quite achieved that full potential yet?

GF:  Well, right now we’re going to use him back out of the bullpen. I think the idea of the big club is to stay with him in that slot for now, Jesús had that dominant performance out of the bullpen a few nights back. So I think that’s where they’re going to stick with him for now. I mean, he’s got the skills and obviously at some point you probably want him back in that rotation, but he wasn’t very effective early in the season. I think there’s some overthrow, there’s a lack of trusting his fastball. We all know he’s got dominant stuff, he throws hard upper 90s, he’s got a good breaking ball. He started relying on his changeup a little bit more than his fastball. I think he just got himself in a position where he wasn’t locating that fastball enough and pitching in hitters counts or deeper counts, and those things add up. It’s too bad he got injured, because he lost some time. Now we’re kind of restarting a little bit – and currently he sits in the pen.

AF:  Well, another interesting guy who’s been in the system a while as well who’s also had the chance to make his major league debut is Daulton Jefferies. He had another injury to start the season, but he’s been back throwing very well at Las Vegas. He’s had a few outings there where he’s looked very good going four or five innings out each time. Where do you think Daulton Jefferies is at at this stage of the game?

GF:  Well, Daulton had another good one today. Las Vegas had a day game and he pitched well, no walks, six punch outs. He’s in the same place he was in early spring training when he was a starter that we were counting on, whether it would be to break with the team early or go down and get five, six quality starts and be ready to go. But once again, the health bug hit him. He went down, and he’s had some minor setbacks, but the last, I think, it’s two outings he’s been injury-free, pain-free, feeling good. So we’ll get him worked back up again and just cross your fingers this young man can stay healthy. He just seems to have a setback right when it’s time to step up, and that’s the only thing we’re just trying to avoid. Just keep him healthy, and if we keep him healthy and pain-free, he should be a complement to our rotation at some point.

AF:  Yeah, that seems to be the trick with a lot of them is just keeping them healthy. Another guy there at Vegas who was a former first-round draft pick that I think a lot of us had big hopes for this season is Grant Holmes. And, unfortunately, he’s really struggled pretty much every time out this season. And I know people were speaking well of him at the alt site and saying his curveball was looking better, he had a new grip on it. I certainly know I had high hopes for him this year, but he’s really struggled most every time out this season. What do you think is going on with Grant Holmes at this point?

GF:  He’s had a rough go. He wasn’t overly sharp in camp. Things haven’t changed as far as the stuff. He’s just having a hard time locating fastballs and working ahead in the counts, and there’s walks in there. The one thing about Grant, we’ve always had a little bit of an issue where I guess us, as evaluators, coaches, instructors, we watch him and we kind of think he’s easy to see. He’s got a long arm, he’s got an easy path to read. Then we always wondered – this guys stuff is so good, why does he get hit so hard? So that’s just been a mystery. But certainly did not expect the results that have been coming out this year. They just really haven’t been good. Hey, we’ve got a long way to go. We’ll work through it and see what we’ve got when we get to the middle part of the year. And everybody’s going to have a piece of trying to figure out what’s missing here. But it’s been disappointing – and I’m sure for him as well.

AF:  Yeah, there definitely seems to be some command and control issues there. And like you said, I’ve heard other people mention that maybe he’s just not deceptive enough, that it’s just a little too easy to get a read on him. But we’ll see how things pan out in his upcoming starts. And then the final pitcher at Vegas I wanted to ask you about is A.J. Puk, who is coming back from yet another injury, and he’s been working out of the bullpen there. He’s been kind of inconsistent – he’s had some good outings and some shaky outings. Where do you think things are at with A.J. Puk at that stage of the game?

GF:  Similar to Daulton Jefferies, we’re hoping for health. A.J.’s been having setbacks as he’s gone along. He’s just not feeling right and things aren’t coming out of his hand as well. The velocity, which used to be 95-98 is now kind of a 91-94. You might get a 95 in there every once in a while. He threw good today and it looked like, health-wise, he came out of it feeling okay. But again, you’re talking about two pitchers, between Jefferies and Puk, who have really had injuries since the day we drafted them. And you’re just hoping to get healthy seasons out of them at some point. So you just keep letting them toe it up and see where we go.

AF:  Well, let’s just hope they can definitely stay healthy. A couple of the best stories on the offensive side of the game at Las Vegas this year are a couple of outfielders, Luis Barrera and Greg Deichmann. Everyone, it seems, has always spoken well of Barrera, at the alt site, at spring training, everyone seemed to be very impressed with him. But Deichmann, he had some issues to work out, and he seems like a whole different hitter this season. He never used to take many walks at all. I think this year he’s almost walked as much as he did in the entire last season that he played. He’s been showing a lot more discipline at the plate, he’s been getting on base. So can you talk a little bit about Luis Barrera and the improvements that you’ve seen out of Deichmann thus far this year?

GF:  Yeah, Luis, he’s more of a slash hitter, and he’s always been able to touch the baseball and move it all over the field. He still needs to be a little bit more disciplined. He likes to swing early and swing often, and that’s his style because he runs so well. He got a couple of days in the big leagues, and I’m sure he was excited about that. Now he’s back in Triple-A, and I think he feels now a little bit more confident that, when there’s a need in the big leagues, he’ll be on the call list. As far as Greg Deichmann, we did spend some time in spring training trying to outline a little bit better his own strike zone. After a thousand at-bats in the minor leagues, you can get a pretty good idea, in our analytics and all our video that we have, about where he hits the baseball, what pitch, where does he like it, and where is no good for him. And we realized that, a lot of the bad swings and the rollovers and the swing-and-miss and the shanks are coming from balls down and in. And so that’s something that we talked about in spring training – now that you’re in Triple-A, you’ve got to have the ability to start saying no in that part of the strike zone, whether it’s a breaking ball, whether it’s a fastball. So there was a little work involved but, also, he’s been healthy. He had a full year last year with the alt site and instructional league and spring training. So maybe there’s been a big turnaround here and he’s becoming more of a hitter and just not trying to rely on power, being more of a professional hitter and getting on base more and keeping the average up and using the field better.

AF:  Well, he certainly seems to have taken the advice to heart. I think his minor league career average had been in the .230s before. And this year, I think he’s sitting in the .290s right now and, like I said, taking a lot more walks. So he’s certainly looked a lot more selective this year, which can only help matters. Now, moving down a notch to Double-A Midland, the interesting story there was that you guys had decided to put a bunch of talented middle infielders there, not just Nick Allen, but also Logan Davidson and Jeremy Eierman. All these guys who’d previously been fairly high draft picks started the year there at Midland. And particularly Nick Allen, it was nice to see him get off to a good start at the plate. We know what he can do in the field, but he had a number of multi-hit games in a row there, he was hitting about .275 before he went off to start playing for the US Olympic team. But can you talk a little bit about what you’ve seen out of Nick Allen and the improvements he’s made at the plate this year?

GF:  Well, if you go back to the beginning of the season, as good a camp as Nicky had, he had a rough start in Midland. And then just went gangbusters for a week and a half and got his batting average up into the mid-threes – he was getting on base – and he’s kind of settled in around that .280 area and doing things right. Now that we’ve got him back, we’ll see how that goes. The biggest thing with Nicky is he’s just keeping the ball out of the air. That’s been his deal from day one is too many fly balls, and a fly ball from Nick Allen is basically an out. This guy’s not going to hit many balls out of the ballpark for a few more years, so he’s got to train on low line drives and using the whole field, which he can do. You know about the defense, so there’s nothing to be said there.

AF:  Yeah, I mean, obviously, if he can hit .250, hey, he’s going to be a valuable player, right?

GF:  Yeah, if he hit .250, now you’re contending for a batting title…because nobody hits!

AF:  The other guy who was your top draft pick just a couple years ago, Logan Davidson, he got off to a rough start there. That was definitely an aggressive promotion. He’d only played a couple months at short-season Vermont, that was the extent of his entire pro career, and then he goes to start at Double-A Midland, which is not an easy hitting environment in general, and he got off to a rough start there. It seems like he’s been turning things around lately and is starting to hit a little better. But where do you think Logan Davidson’s at at this point?

GF:  Well, it was a tough call when we broke camp. We had had these conversations most of camp about what to do with these three guys. And Jeremy Eierman did not kill it at Stockton, so even that push itself was a little aggressive. But the bottom line is all three of them had been to the alt site, they’d been to instructional league. Excuse me, Jeremy wasn’t at the alt site, but Nick and Logan were, and they performed well enough. Their approaches, everything they did at instructional league, were much improved from the ’19 season. But you’re right, Logan was probably the most aggressive jump because, let’s face it, his first year out he hit .220 or whatever it was, in Vermont – that’s not stellar. He never got a chance to see Beloit or Stockton, and you shove him right into Double-A. So we thought he was a little bit better prepared, where he wouldn’t have the kind of month he had in May. Hopefully June becomes better. He looks like he’s starting to square some balls up a little bit. So hopefully he’s less of a concern.

AF:  Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep this recent improvement going and keep the trend going upward. Now, going down another notch to High-A, the A’s new High-A affiliate is in Lansing this year. And it seems like that’s been the destination for a lot of your recent college draft picks. Certainly your second pick last year, Jeff Criswell, the pitcher started there. Unfortunately, after just his first outing, he ended up landing on the injured list. But your fifth pick from last year, Stevie Emanuels, he’s been pitching there in the rotation. And then your third pick from last year, outfielder Michael Guldberg, has been playing in the outfield there. It seems like he’s been hitting very well. I know Jemel Spearman, the area scout who signed him, was very high on his hitting abilities. He seems to be performing well in that aspect, and he’s even been putting a few out of the park. Everybody said he was just a contact guy and didn’t have any power, but I think he’s already hit as many home runs at Lansing as he did in his entire college career. So can you talk a little bit about Michael Guldberg and some of those college guys from last year’s draft that are there at Lansing this year?

GF:  Well, as you mentioned, Criswell, he’s got big stuff. He’s got a rough delivery, so him getting hurt is not a complete shocker to me. But we need to find a way to get him back going. Emanuels has been good. He’s got a little injury tweak going on right now. He’s a 93 mph solid breaking ball guy, throws it over really well. And Guldberg’s got a chance to be an exciting player. He’s not a big physical man, but he’s got a lot of life in his body, a lot of life in his hands, and he’s a plus runner. He did not play a lot of center in college, and we’re playing him a lot more in center here in the pro game because of his skillset. He’s another guy that, since instructional league, every time you start to get excited about this guy, something goes wrong from an injury standpoint as well. So he’s had a couple of quad or hamstring issues since he started playing, and we’ve just got to make sure that he becomes a healthy player as well.

AF:  He certainly has looked good when he’s on the field, that’s for sure. The other really exciting player there at Lansing this year is the 20-year-old Colombian third baseman, Jordan Diaz. I think he’s still leading the team in home runs, still very young hitter, played at Vermont, that was the highest he’d played before. And he’s gotten off to a very good start there at Lansing this year.

GF:  Yeah, Jordan’s always been hitter-ish, there’s no doubt about it. He’s got a good swing, he’s got good hands, he’s got a little pump in there. It’s no different than any other young player learning how to control the strike zone. But eventually we’re going to have to figure out what to do with Jordan defensively. He’s a little bit like Renato Núñez was where…that’s my comparison to him already. He’s just a little bit slow-footed, and he’s always working on trying to become a more accurate thrower. So much of that is footwork – your throwing accuracy is so governed by how good your feet move. So every once in a while, you’re going to see Jordan probably play a different position as we go forward here in Lansing.

AF:  The other interesting guy there at Lansing is your former first-round draft pick, Austin Beck. He was at Stockton last year, which was High-A last year. And so he’s at High-A Lansing this year, basically repeating that level. He’d just gotten going and, unfortunately, he’s landed back on the injured list. But it was interesting to see him starting back there at High-A. Obviously, he hasn’t developed as quickly as folks would like. Where do you think we’re at with Austin Beck at this point?

GF:  We’re about in the same spot. He came to camp light. I was questioning him about, “How’d you lose 12 pounds over COVID?” So he’s trying to work, and he swore to me he was in the weight room every day. He’s just not as physical as he once was. The skillset’s the same but, when he’s not hurt, he’s been showing signs of improvement and playing better. But he’s another one that you turn around and he’s on the shelf. So we need to get him healthy, we need to get him on the field, we need to get 300-400 at-bats out of him and see where we’re at.

AF:  Yeah, it’s hard to make much improvement when you’re not out there playing every day.

GF:  Yeah, it’s very tough.

AF:  The other guy that we always think of when we think of Austin Beck is Lázaro Armenteros. He was repeating this year at Stockton but, since Stockton was High-A last year and is Low-A this year, it was actually a step backwards for him. Fortunately, he got off to a great start at Stockton, was really hitting like crazy there, and he recently was promoted to Lansing. But where do you feel things are at with Lázaro at this stage of the game?

GF:  Well, I think it was good for him to go back and just kind of regroup. He was in Stockton two years ago and struck out 200+ times and we didn’t want that to continue. So moving him back a level let him regroup – and he did. His attitude was better, he didn’t pout, he didn’t mope, he played hard, he swung it, he put the ball in play. He’s so physical and so strong that he just over-matched the baseball at times. What I’m trying to say is, all those hits he was getting, he was hitting .400 when we moved him up, I mean, they weren’t really backspinned or used to the opposite field correctly, but they were just manhandled through the six hole and up the middle. When he hit it, he was really driving it. His exit velos were off the charts. But we’ve still got to find a way to create better trajectory off his bat, where he’s driving the ball to right and he’s got a little lift to the pull side so that we can kind of get these numbers going right. So he’s back where he was, he’s in High-A ball, and he’s going to have a chance to play pretty much every day. So we’ll see where it goes.

AF:  Well, like I said, he started at Stockton, and it seems like that’s now the point of entry for a lot of your top Latin American prospects. Of course, you’ve got the shortstop Robert Puason there, outfielders Brayan Buelvas and Junior Perez, and a whole bunch of Latin American players there. It seems like that’s going to be the first stop for a lot of those guys entering professional ball in the U.S.

GF:  Well, we’ll see. There was a lot of talk, “Is this going to be beneficial for the players? Is this going to be a hindrance to the players?” But when you talk about Puason and Buelvas and even Junior Perez, who we got in the trade, their talent is just so far above what’s in Arizona that we had to take the chance. And we all knew as instructors that, hey, let’s just gang up, let’s keep going in there back to back to back, let’s try to grind through this the first part of the season and stay on top of them. Rico Brogna, the first-year manager, seems like a very fundamental-type guy. So between the rovers coming in, and myself, Ed Sprague, and Rico and his staff just doing fundamental days over and over, hopefully these guys grow up a little bit and catch up to the game. Like Puason, Puason was really, really struggling when I was going in there, and we just camped out on him the whole time. I was there for nine days and stayed on him and things got a little better. But again, those things move at slow rates of speed sometimes. But we had a lot of international money there, and we wanted to spend a lot of time as coaches trying to get it right.

AF:  Trying to make that investment pay off! Like you said, Puason got off to such a slow start – he had one hit over his first many, many games. But recently, the last a week or two, he’s really turned it around. He’s had a lot of multiple hit games – I think he had three hits in one game. And he looked completely over-matched early on – he was striking out in more than half his at-bats. So it seems like whatever you guys said to him must’ve paid some dividends anyway.

GF:  Well, that club is going to end up with a lot of swing and miss, it just is. They’re young, they’re free swingers. We spent a lot of time talking about how to control the strike zone, why it’s so important. And little by little, they’re going to figure some things out, and guys are going to get better. Lawrence Butler‘s getting better at it, Buelvas is getting better at it. So, little by little, hopefully by the second half, these guys have a little bit more awareness for how the game’s played, what bases to throw to, what bases not to throw to, when and where, all the little nuances that come with having to be out there in a competitive world every single day.

AF:  As you mentioned, there certainly are already a lot of really big strikeout numbers there at Stockton. I think Junior Perez already has 50 strikeouts in his first 100 at-bats there this year.

GF:  Yeah, there is. There’s going to be a few.

AF:  Hopefully the learning curve is moving in the right direction anyway.

GF:  Let’s hope so.

AF:  But when we talk about Stockton, of course, the biggest story there this year has to be your first-round pick from last year, catcher Tyler Soderstrom from Turlock, a local boy playing there in Stockton. He’s just 19 years old. And that’s pretty aggressive taking him straight out of high school and putting them there in what used to be the Cal League. But he’s come out of the box looking like a professional hitter. He’s got a whole bunch of doubles, and I know just recently he was leading the league in extra-base hits and he was hitting around 300. So can you talk a little bit about what you’ve seen out of Tyler Soderstrom here in the early going?

GF:  Well, Tyler’s a very advanced teenage hitter. I’m not saying he’s them, but I’d put him in the mold of a young Eric Chávez, Ben Grieve. He’s strong, he’s a durable kid. He’s got a great swing, he’s got power. He gets a little too anxious and wants to swing – he thinks he can hit everything thrown out there, so he’s learning that part of the game. But this guy’s got a chance to be a very accomplished hitter with thunder when it’s all said and done. On the catching side, he’s throwing well. He’s really taken to instruction, he wants to be a catcher, he’s working at it. There’s still some miscues here and there, and he probably loses focus during the game at times like any young player does, but he’s positioning himself better, and he’s catching better than he did a year ago. So Tyler’s got a chance to be an impact player at some stage here in the next few years.

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